I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention—invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. That is the big secret that has brought us down the ages hundreds of thousands of years, from chipping flints to switching on the washing up machine.
—Agatha Christie
—from Agatha Christie: An Autobiography
mudlark / mudlarking. noun or verb. Rarely, slang for a hog. Traditionally, a street urchin or scavenger (or the activities of such); now, hobbyists and treasure seekers who search in muddy areas along rivers. Also, a generic name for various birds that like muddy environments, particularly the magpie lark and Australian slang for a racehorse that excels on muddy tracks.
“Other sewery professions included toshers and mudlarks who delved through muck, in sewers and along fetid riverbanks, for lost jewellery or the odd silver spoon.” (Bill Bryson)
“He had no time for reading, nor did he care what I wrote, nor did he believe I would ever get anywhere, but he liked to hear about it. He was interested in horses, mud-larks particularly. Listening to me was a harmless diversion and worth the price of a good lunch or a new hat, if needs be.” (Henry Miller)
“‘Mudlarks,’ Fraser told him, picking his way. ‘Winter and summer, they slog up to their middles, in the mud o’ low tide. Hunting lumps o’ coal, rusty nails, any river-rubbish that will fetch a penny.’” (Bruce Sterling and William Gibson)
“They resumed conversations that had been interrupted by tavern-fights thirty years earlier at the first Bomb in Dunkirk. And I began to understand that even Queena-Kootah is not so terribly far from London. Standing on a ship in Japan, I am closer to London than ever I was standing on the banks of the Thames as a mud-lark boy.” (Neal Stephenson)
Fake news is old news. → Yellow Journalism: The “Fake News” of the 19th Century
I first noticed the little warnings (“to bake is to wait…”) while doing some Thanksgiving baking. Apparently, there is good reason → Thanks a Lot! New Reasons Not to Eat Cookie Dough. And it looks like the time is finally right for my manuscript, Flours of Evil.
Scurrilous manuscript that could have undone John Donne discovered
“[Tarrare] died shortly afterwards, following a lengthy bout of exudative diarrhoea.” And that’s far from the worst part of a story of failed espionage and a pathological food obsession…among other things. → Tarrare [Thanks, Reader C.!]
“On the eve of the Civil War, a nightmare at sea turned into one of the greatest rescues in maritime history. More than a century later, a rookie treasure hunter went looking for the lost ship—and found a different kind of ruin.” → The Wreck [Thanks, Reader B.!]
Last month was 2017 National Novel Generation Month again, in which participants write code that generates novels…and the results are in! Naturally, I am fond of the Edward Lear Limerick Generator, Shakespeare Summarizes Everything and Acrostic Sonnets on Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
And in the same vein, the 2017 Interactive Fiction Competition (IFComp) winners have also been announced and some of them are amazing. See also: the IFDB (Interactive Fiction Database), “an IF game catalog and recommendation engine.”
“After academics picked out 30 words that have been ‘lost’ from the English language, self-confessed ‘word geek’ Paul Anthony Jones reveals obscure yet delightful terms that also need to be saved from falling into disuse.” → Twenty-six words we don’t want to lose
Today in 1926, Agatha Christie—future Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, “Queen of Crime,” and the best-selling novelist of all time—disappears. Christie’s car was quickly found abandoned at a quarry along with an expired drivers license and some clothes, but despite a massive search and front-page stories in England and the United States, it took ten days to find Christie, who was registed at a hotel in Yorkshire under the name of her husband’s lovers. Christie never provided an explanation, but many little gray cells have been applied to the real-life mystery, yielding theories ranging from amnesia, fugue states and suicidal depression to an aborted attempt to frame her unfaithful husband for murder.
What Flying Was Like in the 60s
from The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man (1898) [via Public Domain Review]
Reader M. brought a problem link to my attention. The story of the virtual Japanese pop sensation Miku Hatsune should have pointed to ► this video.
Reader A.: “I wonder if Poe thought of his raven as rasorial. ¶ Was a bit dusty in the room when I watched ‘Falling Letters’. The pebble alphabet was a cheerful follow-up.”
Reader B.: "First, the full rhyme [of the poem from which ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ coes] moved me deeply. I just spent an hour moving wood and walking in the forest. It reminded me of birds flying south for the winter, and of storing food against the cold months. ¶ Second, Re: One Flew Over, there’s an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia which turns into the Kesey story. Best of all, it stars Danny DeVito.
Reader T. issues a corrective: “‘20 years ago there were only 130 websites total…’ Hmm. Maybe 25 years ago now?”
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